Creative Online Marketing, Link Building and Ecommerce

Over the last few months, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my career moving forward. I have a post-graduate degree in MIS, a few years experience as a Business Analyst, working mainly as a consultant on Workflow projects on Opentext Livelink and a little bit of everything else. I also founded an SEO/Web Marketing company about 2 years ago and I've been spending a lot of time growing that as well, in the process learning Joomla CMS, CRE Loaded, Plone, Etc. Overall, I've enjoyed my work quite a bit, but I feel like I am at crossroads now.

I am debating whether to pursue my entrepreneurial venture - the SEO/Web company, full time and grow it further, or take on consulting work.

I already have about 10 staff members around the world, mostly part-timers, working for me for the SEO company, which is what this site is sort of about. I've spent a lot of time and energy bringing it up to this point and I know that I've just started. If I put in enough time and make some smart decisions, this company can be big enough to fund my full time involvement with it soon enough (my estimate is that it will take 9-12 months). I think I am an entrepreneur at the very core and this option seems like a fun thing for me to do on a long term. Afterall, there's potentially endless growth possibilities and that's what makes the entrepreneurial life so exciting. It also has its share of stresses though. My day will start with irate client calls and staff issues and end with that too. I am a very technically and analytically inclined person and I am not sure I will get enough opportunity to work on technical or analytical things if I choose to run this company full time. The clients will be small businesses - less sophisticated and less state-of-the-art usually compared to large enterprises. So there you see where the dilemma comes from. Also, of course, there is far more risk in running a small business like this to make my living than being a consultant.

Regarding the consulting opportunity, I've been working with document management products such as Livelink and Sharepoint MOSS 2007 for the past 3+ years. Over time, I've become good at it and I realize that these skills are in demand as a consultant. Consultants for these applications get paid anywhere between $80K (salaried) and $75 to $125 per hour for hourly consultants. I am young (mid 20's) and willing to travel. My wife understands and is willing to let me travel to explore my career to the potential. I believe I can land such a gig in about 2-3 months time if I were to start looking. I have some contacts in those areas and that should get me get started. The work involved is highly technical and the clients will be large corporations with streamlined accounting (so I'll get paid on time!) and I'll get to be closer to the leading/bleeding edge of technology (which I love!).

So there you see, I am working a regular 9-5 job now and running my SEO company part time for now. And both options that I have for the future appear lucrative. Now, there is no guarantee that either will work out just as I've described it above, those are just my best guess. And given the current economy, I am not sure how soon I can land a consulting gig either. But I've got to plan and that's the best I could do.

After months of deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that I am going to pursue both! I am going to look for consulting opportunities and run the SEO business as well. I am hoping that within 1-2 years one of them will automatically become an obvious career path for me. I hope I am making the right decision. I am going to have to work really really hard over the next year or so, and that worried me somewhat also. I've spent most of my 20's working hard and my wife always complains that I don't spend enough time with her :). It's a tough game of balancing priorities and I am sure I am not the only one that finds themselves in that spot!

So, for any of you aspiring entrepreneurs or consultants, if you find any useful ideas from this post, I am glad that there was some benefit from my dilemma :). If you have any comments or thoughts, I'd love to hear about them.